Something I consistently get asked when I am selling SEO services is how many keywords I will optimize or how much money per keyword it costs for me to rank their site. If you are asking your SEO this, then stop. If they are actually answering with a specific answer then fire them and find someone else to run your SEO campaign.

A properly executed SEO campaign will target keywords based off of the content of your website. Doing it any other way is risky and will likely get you penalized now or in the future.

SEO is based off of two primary factors:

1. Content on your website
2. Links to your website

Step 1: Focus on the content
What keyword do you want to rank for? For each keyword you want to rank for, you need a page for it. Write a really good article on each keyword. Don’t have time to write an article for every keyword you have? Hire an SEO copywriting firm like iCopywriter or the like.

Step 2: Link to that article
The next step is easy (at least from a description standpoint). Go out and link to the article you wish to rank for the keyword you are after.

I know I put this in simplistic terms, there is a little more to it than the above detail, however, the moral of the story is 2 fold:

1. Don’t ask “how many keywords will I rank for” you are setting yourself up for failure with your SEO. Instead, make sure you have the content and your SEO knows what your priorities are.
2. If your SEO states how many keywords they are going to rank you for, hang up the call, change your number and never talk with that company again.

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Search Engine Optimization has a lot of bad information being passed around. Some of it may have been true at one time or another, but you have stupid people regurgitating bad information and it makes the people who are doing good work look incompetent.  Some of them have been created as a sales tool to scare people into doing business, some of them are simply ignorance. Here are some common ones that I heard from clients and other SEO’s all of the time:

Myth 1 – White Space in Code Will Hurt You - This is a great sales tool to scare you into believing an SEO knows what he is talking about. The white space in your code will not prevent a search engine from indexing your page. Come on now, Google can index and categorize billions and billions of pages…you don’t think they figured out how to ignore the white space on your page?

Myth 2. Google Changes Every month – Google does roll out small updates all of the time, but 99% of them never effect your business. I hear over and over again from other SEO Consultants / firms that you have to “stay on top of it” as every month the Google algorithm changes dramatically. Major changes occur 1-2 times a year tops, and most people are never effected in these either as long as they are doing SEO correctly.

Myth 3. Meta Keywords Help ranking - if some pitches to you that a meta keyword tag increases your likelihood of ranking, run for the hills. They are worthless.

Myth 4. Content is the most important - maybe for Usability, but for SEO rankings, Links outweigh content 10/1. I believe this is changing in the near future, but for now, as of the date of this post, Links are about the only thing that matters.

Myth 5. Unique Keyword Research Tools - most SEO’s will say they have some unique and crazy, custom built tool to identify keywords for your campaign. It’s B.S. They use the same tools you do. The Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and maybe Keyword Spy will give you all the information you need.

Myth 6. Google indexes Flash - I have been hearing this lately. Maybe they CAN index flash, but they are not ranking it worth a crap. Be like Steve Jobs and stay away from flash at all cost.

Myth 7. No follow links are worthless – This is crap and I have proven it over and over again.  Google will decide a links relevance, and they do ignore no-follows. Google only cares about relevance and if a link from the home page of The New York Times has a no follow, I assure you it will provide a lot of SEO value. Sure, you might not see it in a back link report, but I assure you it is going to help.

Myth 8. Google Penalizes Duplicate Content - in most cases, you will not lose rankings because you have the same content as someone else. You may not get credit/rankings for content on your site if it is duplicate, but you are not going to get hurt or penalized for it. Think about how many people sell the same products online and all use the manufacturers description. You think they are going to get hurt for that?

Myth 9. Reverse Algorithms - I hear this a lot when I shop competitors. The pitch usually goes something like “We have reversed engineered Google” This is total crap. Google is a hell of a lot smarter than an SEO, and they are always one step ahead of manipulative tactics. Sure, there are things that can help your SEO campaign and linking campaigns that will give you a push, but there is no secret sauce that some consultant came up with that has beaten Google’s robust platform of determining the rank of a page. If they did, Yahoo would have hired them for a billion dollars.

Myth 10. Keyword Density Matters – I cannot believe this one is coming up again, it is likely some sales guy trying to close something. Keyword density is how many times a keyword shows up on your page versus all of the other words on it. If I had 100 words in a post, and I put in the word ‘SEO consultant” 4 times, it would be a 4% keyword density. This USED to count a lot, in fact, it was Alta Vista’s primary algo 12 years ago. It is not relevant anymore. Just make sure your content is relevant to the keyword topic you are trying to optimize for and you will be fine.

Let me know in the comment below or email me if you think I am incorrect. I am pretty sure I am nails on all of these, but am happy to keep an open mind.

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There was recently a really good post on SEOmoz.org on the topic of links vs. Content for search engine rankings. They had several high level SEO people (not me, whats up with that?) give their opinion on if good content produces rankings alone, the answers were all pretty similar. The consensus was that content alone won’t produce rankings, which is 100% accurate, for now at least.

If you purchased a domain today, and wrote a 400 page paper on how to cure cancer,  it would not rank in Google unless other sites with authority linked to it. No SEO in his right mind can contest this fact. Ranking in Google still largely depends on link votes (page rank) as the main factor.  However, without content on the other side of a strong link campaign, you will be hard pressed to get the rankings you are after. In my mind, content is a necessary ingredient for links to get you ranking. It is like the garlic in a spaghetti sauce, without it, it is just tomatoes.

There are a couple of reasons to still worry about content.

1. I do believe the content/link weight ratio will change with further development of the semantic engine behind Google. Links are too easily manipulated, good content is not. To better their search engine, they must have a better content/link weight ratio. So building good content now will hedge you against a major filter in the future.

2. traffic without good content is a complete and utter waste of time. Why would you drive someone to a page on your site that is gibberish? What purpose is that going to serve you?

3. Bounce rate is going to get more important with future algorithm roll outs. Bad content will make people leave your site very quickly. Remember, they can test bounce rate without you even having analytics installed. Its simple. User clicks on your listing in Google, how quickly they come back to Google to find another result can be a measurement Google uses to test bounce rate. Have good content and once again you don’t need to worry about future algorithm changes.

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Patrick Gavin’s new business is DIYSEO.com. They talk about their system as being a Do-It-Yourself SEO platform dedicated to small businesses.  Shoemoney says that SEO Consultants are losing sleep at night…but quite the opposite is true in my mind.

Small businesses, which in my mind are businesses that spend less than $5000 a year on marketing, are in desperate need of a service like this. The video on the website says it all, it cost too much to hire guys like me to run and operate your SEO campaign.  Further, when you hire a high-end consultant, you are going to be 4-6 months away from achieving ROI. This system could be a great first step before hiring an outside company to perform a high-level SEO strategy.  Unless you can afford my $50,000+ per website expense right out the gate, something like this is absolutely necessary. Small Businesses need some type of platform to help them do the basic fundamentals of SEO until it starts producing some local/long tail results and you can then afford to re-invest with the program.

I have not seen the software yet, however, I suspect it is like Hubspots ‘Website Grader’ on steroids. It will help you organize all of the things that you need to be doing at the times you should be doing it. I would hope it gives step by step guidelines on how to do the things correctly, which is where ‘Website Grader’ falls short.

I will sign up and give it a shot on one of my online businesses and report what I think about it. For $50/month, I cant see it being a waste of money…I am sure it will pay for itself at the level.

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Forrester put out a great white paper entitled “The Best and Worst of Paid Search in 2009“. It is a good read, but mostly data-driven. The bottom line is simple, are you doing the 5 things that they did the entire study off of? See below:

1. Does the keyword appear in the paid search ad title and description? – This is a no-brainer but often overlooked. They are searching a particular keyword on purpose, make sure you deliver that keyword.

2. Does the ad copy “pre-qualify” clickers? You don’t want ad copy to totally distract visitors, however, you don’t want to falsey drive people into your website as you wont convert them. Try and be both compelling, but also, try and explain what it is you are going to offer them before they click.

3. Does the ad contain a compelling call to action? This is a no-brainer and often overlooked. Put a specific promo in your ad copy like “Free Shipping”, “Free Download”, etc.

4. Is the landing page content relevant to the keyword? This is another often overlooked issue. If someone typed in ‘Purple Widget’ are you selling a purple widget on your landing page? You better be!

5. Does the landing page employ Scenario Design practices to aid user experiences? Is the page usable? Does it have the call to actions necessary to convert a customer?

If you think of all the above items before launching a paid search campaign, and execute on them, your campaign is 300% more likely to be a successful one!

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